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Join us on Sunday for the Philadelphia debut of VCDC featuring our friends Frode Gjerstad and Fred Lonberg-Holm. We have a few small (mens and womens) ANW t-shirts we'll be giving away to ticket buyers (who can fit in them!). Hope to see you then.

Ars Nova Workshop has reached the halfway point of its Spring 2013 concert season; it has been a great one so far! Thanks for joining us for the performances by Barry Altschul's 3Dom Factor, the Whammies, Kris Davis's Capricorn Climber, Ches Smith & These Arches, and most recently, the spectacular sold-out show at Philadelphia Art Alliance with the Billy Hart Quartet. It was the perfect way to welcome the quartet for its first ever Philly date.
The season continues. Due to reasons beyond our control, we had to cancel dates with Mats Gustafsson and Merzbow, and with Jasaon Adasiewicz's Sun Rooms. But we're happy to announce some new additions to the calendar. ICP Orchestra, the Engines and the Craig Taborn Trio are up next, and we've just added performances by Odean Pope and Andrew Cyrille in duo, a double-bill with the Sun Ra Arkestra and Mike Reed's People, Places and Things, Peter Brötzmann and Joe McPhee in duo, and the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble.
Check out a summary of our upcoming events below. To purchase tickets, and for more information about the performers, please refer to the “Events” page of the ANW website. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news.

ANW will be presenting many groups making Philadelphia debuts in the New Year, including The Whammies, Kris Davis's Capricorn Climber, the Billy Hart Quartet, and the Craig Taborn Trio. ANW will also welcome back to Philadelphia Ches Smith & These Arches, the ICP Orchestra and The Engines.

Check out a summary of our Spring 2013 season below. To purchase tickets, and for more information about the performers, please refer to the “Events” page of the website. And don't forget to follow Ars Nova Workshop on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news.

In May, 1968, the German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann brought together seven emerging European experimental musicians for what is now considered to be one of the most critical recording sessions in the history of improvised music.

The “Machine Gun Sessions” featured several improvisers whose soon-to-be-celebrated careers were just beginning: the British saxophonist Evan Parker, the Dutch reedsman Willem Breuker, the German bassists Peter Kowald and Buschi Niebergall, the Swedish drummer Sven-Åke Johansson, the Dutch drummer Han Bennink, and the Belgian pianist Fred Van Hove. Released in 1968 by Brötzmann's BRO label, and reissued three years later on FMP (the label founded by Brötzmann, Kowald and Alexander von Schlippenbach), Machine Gun is arguably the most brutal, beautiful and enlightened recording of the early Free-Jazz period.

In celebration of the 44th Anniversary of this legendary moment in the history of Free-Jazz, Ars Nova Workshop is excited to present several Machine Gun-related performances this Fall. (Prepare for another Philadelphia appearance by a Machine Gun musician next Spring. Hint: He's Dutch and he plays drums).

The season begins on Tuesday, September 4 at the International House, as Peter Brötzmann performs in duo with the Chicago vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz (with an opening set by the drummer Chris Corsano and the guitarist Bill Orcutt).

Then, on Tuesday, October 2, ANW presents the final Philadelphia performance by the Willem Breuker Kollektief. When Breuker, also a founding member of the Instant Composers Pool with Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink, died in 2010, his will stated that this 10-piece ensemble he founded in 1974 could embark on only one more tour following his death. This is it.

Finally, on Saturday, November 10, ANW presents a very rare solo performance by the pianist Fred van Hove. Following his participation in the legendary “Machine Gun Sessions,” van Hove went on to create the renowned avant-garde musician collectives the Werkgroep Improviserende Musici, the Musica Libera Antverpiae and the Musica Libera Belgicae.

We look forward to seeing you on September 4! For more information about these events, and the rest of Ars Nova Workshop's Fall Season, please go to: www.arsnovaworkshop.org. For the latest news, follow ANW on Twitter and Facebook.

Ars Nova Workshop is excited to announce our Fall 2012 Season! We plan to commence our 13th year as Philadelphia's leading presenter of jazz and experimental music with a bang, and it all begins at the International House on September 4 with a night of duos featuring legendary German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann with vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, and guitarist Bill Orcutt with drummer Chris Corsano.

This season we will be presenting new ensembles making their first Philadelphia appearances, such as the bassoonist Katherine Young's Pretty Monsters and the Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten's The Young Mothers, and several very rare performances by legendary and renowned European experimental musicians, including the last Philadelphia concert by the Willem Breuker Kollektief, a solo set by the Belgian pianist Fred Van Hove, and the saxophonist Frode Gjerstad's all-Norwegian trio.

Below you will find a summary of our Fall Season. Please refer to the event pages to the right for more details, including information about purchasing tickets, and don't forget to follow Ars Nova Workshop on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news. Be sure to survive the summer heat, because we hope to see you all in September!

Leading up to the April 28th premiere at Montgomery County Community College of a new piece written by Muhal Richard Abrams for Bobby Zankel's Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, music writer Shaun Brady (JazzTimes, Philadelphia City Paper, Philadelphia Inquirer) will be contributing a series of blog posts about the project. This is the second installment of Brady's four-part series.

A Conversation With Muhal Richard Abrams and the Warriors Of The Wonderful Sound

On April 28 at Montgomery County Community College, Bobby Zankel’s big band the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound will premiere a new piece written for the ensemble by legendary pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams. Recently named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master and a member of Downbeat Magazine’s Hall of Fame, Abrams is a co-founder of the hugely influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and a composer whose work and influence spans the diverse history of classic, modern and avant-garde jazz. At 81, he continues to wield an enormous influence through his recordings and teachings, not least through some of modern jazz’s most important musicians.

At a recent rehearsal with the Warriors, Abrams explained how he would spontaneously cue soloists during the performance with a telling assertion: “Your decisions will be generated by what I hear,” he told the band. After a pause he added, “Which is how it should be.”

WRTI’s J. Michael Harrison spoke to Abrams about the project during a break, a partial transcript of which is below. Afterwards, however, I spoke to three of the longest-tenured Warriors about the experience. Saxophonist Daniel T. Peterson said that Muhal “exudes positivity and energy. I’ve always considered him a piano player, of course, but I’ve also noticed that he’s a coordinator, someone who puts people and situations together. That’s been very clearly part of this process. He’s been working with us and drawing from that and using it in creative ways and thinking of different ways to make the piece very personal.”

In comparison with recent compositions for the band by saxophonists Rudresh Mahanthappa and Steve Coleman, pianist Tom Lawton said, “The three of them have been completely different from each other. Each of these people has their own language; we have to bend to that somewhat, but I think this project has been the easiest to be ourselves while still doing that.”

Saxophonist Elliott Levin, whose relationship with Zankel dates back to 1974, when both played with iconoclastic pianist Cecil Taylor, called Abrams’ piece “some of the hardest saxophone stuff I’ve ever played. You have to concentrate from beginning to end. It’s a very clear piece but very, very challenging. I think it’s pushing everybody to be a better musician. It’s not easy to put all those elements together and make it musical the way that this is. I think it’s going to be an event, something really special.” - Shaun Brady

Leading up to the April 28th premiere at Montgomery County Community College of a new piece written by Muhal Richard Abrams for Bobby Zankel's Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, music writer Shaun Brady (JazzTimes, Philadelphia City Paper, Philadelphia Inquirer) will be contributing a series of blog posts about the project. This is the second installment of Brady's four-part series.

A Conversation With Vijay Iyer

On April 28 at Montgomery County Community College, Bobby Zankel’s big band the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound will premiere a new piece written for the ensemble by legendary pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams. In the weeks leading up to the event, we’ll be discussing Abrams’ influence and legacy with some of modern jazz’s leading figures.

Pianist Vijay Iyer’s wide-ranging discography runs the gamut from his ground-breaking trio work to his long-standing collaboration with alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, the jazz/South Asian fusion ensemble Tirtha to the collective trio Fieldwork with fellow innovative composers/improvisers Steve Lehman and Tyshawn Sorey. His trio’s acclaimed CD Historicity earned him a 2010 Grammy nomination, and their recent follow-up, Accelerando, further evolves their expansive approach. In his Harlem home, Iyer recalled one early encounter with Abrams, at a gig by the initial incarnation of Fieldwork (with Aaron Stewart and Elliot Humberto Kavee).

Vijay Iyer: The first Fieldwork gig ever was in 1999 at the Alterknit, which was this horrible little prison cell of a room in the basement of the Knitting Factory with café tables and metal folding chairs. I remember there at the front table were Muhal, Henry Threadgill, and Andrew Hill sitting right in front of us. That was basically one of the scariest gigs of my life, but it was so nice to see that these guys who’ve been such important creative forces still cared about what people like us were doing, especially since we weren’t even on the map. Afterwards, I talked to Muhal because I was so grateful that he came but at the same time I was sort of mortified to be seen in a room like that, or that people of their stature had to come into that space. It was not dignified. He said really nice things about the music, and I said, ‘We’re just trying to get out of this room.’ And he said, ‘Well, play your way out.’ Which is to say, the music contains within it the ingredients for self-transformation. And I can honestly say thirteen years later, that’s what happened.

How did you initially discover Muhal’s music?

VI: In the nineties, when I was living in Berkeley CA, I used to buy a lot of used CDs from this place called Amoeba Records. I noticed that somewhere in the ‘A’ section there was a guy who put out a lot of records on Black Saint/Soul Note Records, so I just started acquiring some of these albums because they were connected to other artists that I was familiar with and really interested in. People like the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Threadgill. They all talked about Muhal in really exalted terms, so I started checking out the albums. His level of achievement as a composer was staggering considering that you didn’t really see him ‘on the scene’ as much as everybody else.

Ars Nova Workshop is celebrating National Jazz Appreciation Month this April with four special jazz concerts by Ballister, Endangered Blood, Steve Lehman Trio and Steve Coleman & Five Elements.

Since 2001, the Smithsonian Institution has facilitated Jazz Month events across the country, and last year Mayor Nutter announced that the jazz community in Philadelphia, the city where legends like John Coltrane and Lee Morgan began their careers, would collectively participate. ANW is happy to announce the following performances as we help contribute to the celebration and elevation of one of America's most important art forms.

Information about ANW's four Jazz Month events is below, and tickets can be purchased on the individual event pages. Keep an eye out for other Jazz Month events across the city, and we hope to see you at the concerts!

Leading up to the April 28th premiere at Montgomery County Community College of a new piece written by Muhal Richard Abrams for Bobby Zankel's Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, music writer Shaun Brady (JazzTimes, Philadelphia City Paper, Philadelphia Inquirer) will be contributing a series of blog posts about the project. This is the second installment of Brady's four-part series.

A Conversation With Bobby Zankel and Jason Moran

On April 28 at Montgomery County Community College, Bobby Zankel’s big band the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound will premiere a new piece written for the ensemble by legendary pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams. In the weeks leading up to the event, we’ll be discussing Abrams’ influence and legacy with some of modern jazz’s leading figures.

Pianist Jason Moran emerged on the scene in the late 1990s, a product of Houston’s renowned High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and the Manhattan School of Music. Discovered by saxophonist Greg Osby, Moran soon began to revolutionize the sound of the piano trio with The Bandwagon, his group with bassist Tarus Mateen and Nasheet Waits, often incorporating influences from conceptualist art. He was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” grant in 2010, and last year was named Artistic Advisor for Jazz at the Kennedy Center. Moran studied with Muhal Richard Abrams during his early years in New York. I spoke to him, along with Bobby Zankel, at his Manhattan apartment.

How did you first encounter Muhal?

Jason Moran: My father had a fairly large record collection, and in it were a lot of AACM cats [Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the pioneering Chicago organization that Muhal co-founded in the mid-1960s]. When I started piano at age six I wasn’t paying attention to what he collected over the years, but by the time I was maybe seventeen, late in high school, I started listening to other people. I had been listening to Wynton Kelly, McCoy Tyner, Thelonious Monk, and Herbie Hancock, but then I also started listening to Andrew Hill and Herbie Nichols, and that’s when I found Muhal Richard Abrams. Muhal was suggesting something else for the piano, in the same way that people like Sam Rivers proposed something else for the saxophone. I thought, ‘This is peculiar.’ The compositions are different, his touch on the piano is different, but you hear these gestures towards Scott Joplin or ragtime or stride piano. So I really thank my father for having kind of a wild sensibility about the music he liked.

Leading up to the April 28th premiere at Montgomery County Community College of a new piece written by Muhal Richard Abrams for Bobby Zankel's Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, music writer Shaun Brady (JazzTimes, Philadelphia City Paper, Philadelphia Inquirer) will be contributing a series of blog posts about the project. This is the first installment of Brady's four-part series.
Different Than The Different: Bobby Zankel and the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound meet Muhal Richard Abrams

On April 28 at Montgomery County Community College, Bobby Zankel’s big band the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound will premiere a new piece written for the ensemble by legendary pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams. Recently, at his West Philadelphia home, Zankel discussed the warriors’ ten-year history, his own life in music, and the excitement of commissioning new music from one of jazz’s most ground-breaking figures.

The Warriors of the Wonderful Sound were first assembled in 2001 for a fledgling jazz festival called Collective Voices. “I’ve always tried to surround myself with the best musicians I can, which usually means older musicians, the guys who know things I don’t know,” Zankel says. The Warriors, on the other hand, largely consisted of the most promising members of Philadelphia’s young modern jazz scene, who were looking to Zankel for wisdom and guidance. “In this situation I was the old head. I’ve watched the guys mature. It’s been a great growing experience for everybody.”

Over the next decade, the band would take the minute stage at Philly’s Tritone to wrestle with Zankel’s intricate compositions. On February 2nd they’ll take that stage again to pay tribute to the great saxophonist Sam Rivers, who passed away at the end of 2011. In the past, Zankel has written or arranged music in honor of other lost mentors, including Bill Dixon, Edgar Bateman, Sid Simmons and George Russell. For Rivers, who he knew and admired for forty years, he’s arranged a new version of the saxophonist’s best-known tune, “Beatrice.”

Ars Nova Workshop is a Philadelphia nonprofit jazz and experimental music presenting organization. ANW informs, inspires, and challenges listeners to elevate the role of jazz, improvisation, and experimental music in contemporary culture. ANW events provide a forum for discourse, emergent trends in contemporary music, and unique forms of cultural exchange, while nurturing a diverse community for innovative music.